of which was Sir Walter Scott, who had been ruined by the explosion of 1825. Under the restricted currency the revenue of the government was continually falling short, amid general distress, until, in 1832, Wellington was made "dictator," to put down the popular meetings in favor of the reform bill. He immediately adopted military measures, and when his troops were about to march, a placard with the words, "To stop the Duke and go for gold," appeared in all public places. The effect of this was a drain of £2,000,000 in two days from the bank, a resignation of Wellington, and the return of whig ministers to power. The bank had its charter modified in 1832, and, to favor the procurement of a loan of £22,000,000, to emanci pate the negroes of the West Indies, in 1834 she made money so plenty, that speculation ran riot over the face of the earth, and, followed by a bad harvest, resulted in virtual failure in Nov., 1839, when she was saved by a loan from the bank of France. In 1829, Lord Goderich, seeing the temporary benefits to a minister of an inflated currency, had passed a bill to authorise joint stock banks, and these came into operation in 1834, by hundreds, adding to the excitement. In 1844, the charter of the bank expired, and Sir Robert Peel being in power, the opportunity was seized upon to carry out the policy began by the currency bill of 1819. It was admitted on all sides that the taxes upon labor were too heavy; and one party said, diminish them by returning to inconvertible paper for home use, and let there be two prices, one for foreign trade in specie and another for internal trade in paper. The government adopted the other plan, on the theory that the money in the country should ebb and flow with the wants of trade, as freely as any other article. And to enable it to do so, taxes should be removed from consumable articles, and a state of entire free trade approximated. That instead of laborers being relieved of taxes by allowing them to pay in depreciated paper, they should be relieved of the taxes themselves, and the latter drawn from property. With this view, the bank was restrained from issuing more than £14,000,000 of paper on credit, but might issue as many more bills as there was gold to represent it. The country banks were restrained also from issuing more than £8,417,471 of notes on credit. During the last seven years, bullion has accumulated in the bank, until the vast railroad speculations have enhanced the consumption of foreign goods to an inordinate extent, and deficient crops in Ireland have swelled the demand for food. These have created such a run upon the bank that she is again in jeopardy. What will now be the result? In 1745 she was saved by paying out sixpences. In 1797 she failed, but her credit was saved by an "order in council" for "state reasons." In 1825 she was saved by a "lucky box of notes." In 1832, by the resignation of the Duke of Wellington. In 1839, by help from Paris. In 1847, by what? The Emperor of Russia has sent thither £2,000,000 of gold, but will that suffice? £8,000,000 have been added to the debt, for account of Ireland, and the chances are that £9,000,000 of exchequer bills must be funded, adding £27,000,000 to the national debt. This amount of exchequer bills fell due on May 21, and being at a heavy discount, three modes of meeting them remained to the chancellor, first, to pay them, second, to raise the interest, third, to fund them. The second mode was adopted, and the rate raised to 4 per cent. per annum, when the bills scarcely commanded par. We believe this is the first time that an English government 43 per cent. would not bring more than par. United States treasury notes, in time of war, at 52 interest, bring 106. In this state of affairs, the prospect is that the whole £9,000,000 of exchequer bills must be funded, increasing the permanent debt of the country, through one year of distress, to a sum double the expense of one year's war to the United States. The pre B sent crisis is by far the most formidable that England has encountered; and it results from the fact, that her available capital has been vastly diminished within a few years, and has been nearly ruined by the losses of the harvest. The available capital of a country consists in its commodities being the annual product of the aggregate labor. Great Britain's consists, first, of the soil, peopled by 27,000,000 people; 2d. Of the dwellings, buildings, factories, machinery, ships, fixed capital; and thirdly, of the annual produce of the general labor, in the shape of commodities. These latter, with some £40,000,000 of gold and silver, constitute the real wealth. Of the 27,000,000 of people, 8,000,000 live in Ireland, and of these, one-half produce nothing in usual years but what they eat; at the end of the year the soil and the people only remain. There is no "hoarded labor" in the shape of any commodity. The other half raise surplus, which, for the most part, goes out for absentee rents and taxes; so that, although they annually earn more than they consume, yet nothing remains at the end of the year, available, in Ireland; scarcely the fixed capital is kept good, to facilitate the annual products. In England, in usual years, there has been an accumulation of capital. That is to say, at the close of the year there has remained, in the shape of goods, colonial produce, stocks of food, and gold coin and bullion, hoarded labor, to a considerable extent, available on an emergency. The accumulation has been aided, indeed, by the fact, that the people at large consume less than they ought, while profuse expenditure is confined to but few. The soil of England and Ireland has generally yielded enough to feed all the inhabitants of Great Britain, that is, to keep them from starving; and the labor of the manufacturing population has produced exportable goods somewhat in excess of what was necessary to pay for imports of raw materials and colonial produce. Some labor has, therefore, been "hoarded," in the shape of gold and silver, increased stocks of goods, and of colonial and foreign produce in warehouses. In former years, money pressure has been caused by too large an importation of these articles diminishing the price of gold, and it has been relieved by sending them to the continent to sell, and draw against, by which operation exchanges would turn, and gold flow into the country. This year the pressure arises from different causes. In the first place, £100,000,000 was appropriated to the building of railroads, and 500,000 persons were employed. Now, the application of such a sum of money does not mean the actual payment of this amount in coin. It means that $500,000,000 worth of commodities were appropriated to the consumption of 500,000 persons, taken from other employments, and put to the construction of iron roads. So large an employment required higher wages; that is to say, iron masters asked more for iron, and were compelled to pay more to their workmen; all the persons employed on the roads got more, and consumed more commodities than usual. Probably £30,000,000 more of commodities or capital was consumed, than would have been the case had usual employments been continued. The failure of the harvests took £30,000,000 more capital; the scarcity of raw materials, particularly cotton, took £30,000,000 more capital from the country, by diminishing the proceeds of labor, and requiring more money to pay for the same quantity of material. For these reasons, mainly, the stocks of food, colonial produce, and goods, have been exhausted, and the only description of capital available is gold and silver. This has been expended to the extent of £7,000,000; and even should there be a good harvest, £20,000,000 may be required. No other description of wealth will answer but gold, wherewith to buy food. In this state of affairs what is the bank to do? or what avails it on what "system of finance" its business is conducted? The proposition to issue £1 notes, to the extent of £30,000,000, is based on the notion that they will rapidly supplant gold in circulation, and drive it into the bank, where it will be made available to export; that is to say, it is a proposition to expend the last resource of hoarded labor or capital; and, as a desperate movement, to stave off starvation for the moment, may be a good one; but suppose the notes all out, the gold extracted from circulation, and sent to the United States for food, and that the next harvest should be short, where then will be the bank and this funding system? JACQUELINE PASCAL.* EVERY thing that concerns those great men with whose names we have been familiar from our very childhood, is possessed of a deep interest. We are not satisfied to know all we can of their lives as public men; we wish for something more. We wish to seat ourselves around their family fireside, to become acquainted with those beings who, during their infancy or their youth, watched over them as the guardian angels of their lives.Mr. Cousin, in the work we have before us, was no doubt actuated by this natural impulse. After having studied, with that energetic perseverance which is one of the characteristics of this distinguished French writer, the works of Blaise Pascal, his attention was called to the family of the great philosopher. Pascal himself is known to every man who pretends to any education. He is the pride, not only of France and of Catholicism, but of the whole Christian and civilized world. His works have been read, not only in the original, but also in all modern languages, and are justly ranked among the most remarkable productions of the human mind. The two sisters of this extraordinary man had heretofore been almost unknown; the glory of their brother seemed to have cast them in the shade; and yet the memory of these two women was well worthy of being preserved. Jacqueline, in particular, deserved to be remembered. The affinity between her and her brother is remarkable, and could not fail to strike one who, like Mr. Cousin, had spent so much time in meditating on the works of that immortal genius. He consequently resolved to give the world an account of the life and writings of so remarkable a woman,-we would rather say, child-for she preserved through life that virgin purity which bears so strong a resemblance to the innocence of childhood. "Gifted with a genius," says Mr. Cousin, "which, with a greater degree of cultivation, might have made her an incomparable person; beautiful and full of animation; of a serious turn of mind, but an amiable character; endowed with the greatest facility for poetry, she was born to be the delight of her family and the ornament of a select circle of friends. But, suddenly seized with an exaggerated spirit of piety, she renounced the world, and, at the age of twenty-six, retired into a convent, where she died, ten years later, in all the anguish of a troubled conscience." Such is the person whom Mr. Cousin has delineated in his book. The method he has followed in the composition of the work has given to it a * Jacqueline Pascal. Par Victor Cousin. Paris: Didot. 1845. character of original interest. Whenever it is possible he lets Jacqueline speak for herself; and when, in her correspondence, or her poetical effusions, he does not find the necessary particulars of her life, he has recourse to the writings of her sister Gilberte, (Madame Périer) to supply what is wanting in this respect. It may be said, in fact, that it is only in the introductory part of the book that the author himself appears. Had biography always been written in this manner, some portions of the history of the world would be less enveloped in darkness, or less perverted by those writers who, instead of letting their heroes appear as they really were, clothe them either with imaginary perfections, or darken their memory by false ac cusations. Mr. Cousin begins his work by remarking that, during the seventeenth century-the brilliant age of Louis XIV.-the women were almost equal to the men in intellectual acquirements. Let it not be supposed, however, that Mr. Cousin is an admirer of what we vulgarly call a blue-stocking. On the contrary, it is impossible to mark with more energy and truth than he, the distinction unhappily too often neglected-between a woman of a superior mind and a woman who writes for the public. Man "I am not," says he, "of the school of Moliere in respect to women. and woman have the same soul and the same destiny. They will be obliged to render the same account of the use which they shall have made of their moral and intellectual faculties. It is barbarous in man to seek to degrade these faculties. It is a crime in woman to allow them to be degraded. Ought not women to be instructed in the grounds of their religious faith, if they are to practise it as intelligent and free moral agents? And if religious instruction is not only allowed them—even enjoined upon them—what other instruction can appear above their comprehension? Either woman was not born to be the companion of man, or it is an absurd contradiction not to allow her to hold a spiritual intercourse with him of whose destiny she is to partake-whose labors she is at least to understand, and whose sufferings she is to relieve. Let us, then, allow her to cultivate her intelligence by all useful studies and acquirements, provided she violates not the supreme law of her sex-modesty-the source of all her charms." He then shows that woman is a domestic being, and highly approves of Rousseau's ideas on the education of woman, which, he says, Rousseau understood much better than that of man: I "Man, on the contrary, is born for action; he acts even when writing. All serious authors write to defend some noble cause confided to their courage or their genius. A man who writes merely for the sake of writing-to get a name or to make a fortune-the author by profession, is an able workman, who contributes to the amusement of the public, and who thus obtains a just degree of consideration, but who can never acquire true glory. True glory is attained at another and higher price; it is the universal testimony of the gratitude of mankind; and mankind is not prodigal of its gratitude. If I say this of the man of letters, what shall say of the woman who writes? What a woman who, thanks be to heaven, has no public cause to defend, appears before the public? And her modesty does not revolt at the idea of disclosing to all eyes—of selling to him who bids highest, -to expose to the examination of the bookseller, the reader or the journalist, her most secret beauties-her most mysterious charms-her soul-her feelings-her sufferings her internal struggles? This is a spectacle which, although I see it every day, and among the most respectable women, will ever be to me an incomprehensible mystery. In this respect I belong, I confess, to another age. If any one should tell me that Madame de Sévigné intended for the public, or for the 'Mercure de la France,' those letters in which she pours out the effusions of her maternal affection and her inexhaustible facility, I should answer, without hesitation-firstly, You injure Madame de Sévigné in my eyes. She was for me a mother, full of passion and genius; you convert her into a bel esprit ;' and sec ondly, 'You are mistaken.' When we write for publication, and in order to be read by every one, we write very differently. We may, indeed, write very agreeably, but never with that natural grace-with that involuntary charm, which the heart alone inspires, and which the coquette does not find on looking in her mirror." Mr. Cousin ends this spirited passage, which of course loses much of its original force in our translation, by saying "There are but two things which can justify a woman in becoming an authoress-great talent, or poverty; and I confess I have more respect for the latter than for the former excuse." It will be seen by this extract that Mr. Cousin, because he thinks that woman was not born for the anxieties and cares of public life, does not consider her as a being in any way inferior to man. What he says is a good answer to those women who, from the superiority of their intelligence, or from some defect in their early education, aspire to the difficult honor of appearing as authoresses before the public, and who, consequently, accuse men of tyranny, when they advise them to stop and reflect before they take the first and irretrievable step in the career which is about to open before them. They always imagine-or rather affect to imagine, that we do not wish to allow them the privilege of thinking, because we do not desire that they should give to the public the result of their thoughts. Unfortunately, many women-particularly in France, do not understand the difference that there is between using those faculties with which God has endowed them, to charm and adorn their private life, and exercising them to gratify their thirst for fame. In France, women, when they are gifted with superior intelligence, are much disposed to imitate the example of two of the most remarkable women of our age-Madame de Stael and George Sand.— Mr. Cousin has, therefore, done well not only to express his horror and contempt for the authoress by profession, but also to set up before the public the bright and pure image of Pascal's sister, in order to show that woman may be gifted with the rarest qualities, and yet possess all those virtues which belong to her alone. Jacqueline Pascal was born at Clermont, in Auvergne, on the 4th October, 1625. At an early age she evinced a superior mind, and the wit of her childish repartees often astonished those about her. It is curious, however, that when, at the age of seven, her sister, Gilberte, who was only six years older, attempted to teach her to read, she could not prevail upon her to apply herself to this first, but necessary acquirement; and it was not until she had heard her sister read some verses that, pleased with their rhythmical harmony, she said, "When you wish me to read, let me read verses, and I shall attend to my lesson as long as you like." This early taste for poetry did not belie itself at a later period. When eight years old she began to compose verses herself; at the age of thirteen she had the small pox; the entire loss of her beauty was the consequence of this terrible disease. Far from grieving at this loss, which she was already old enough to appreciate, had she been in the least vain, she composed some verses, in which she expresses her gratitude to God, who, in depriving her of her beauty, had given her an additional and more certain means of preserving her innocence. When fifteen, she went with her family to Rouen, where she resided for five or six years, frequenting society and exercising her poetical muse. It was not until 1646, when having been confirmed in this town by the Bishop de Belley, that she evinced the first signs of that spirit of devotion, which ended by her immuring herself in a convent. After her return to Paris, in the course of the following year, she became |